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It was not that Rue had not had a plan. They had been groomed by the arch fey of the Court of Wonder since before they could remember to be the creature that they were today; of course they had a plan. It was a rich, detailed manuscript of predictive contingencies and premeditated spontaneity, the culmination of every desire and fear they had ever repressed, a nigh on religious document to the memorization of which Rue devoted hours before sleep every night for weeks in preparation for the Bloom. They had a plan. They just didn't plan for Captain Hob.
How could they? His very nature was to be beyond prediction. Some of it, Rue was certain, had to be by design. But the first thing, the very first thing Hob had done to change everything, the thing that set all that followed in motion, was something that Rue could say for a fact was outside of Hob's control.
He was a bugbear. Better yet, a strange one.
Later on, he would be kind. He would be earnest, short of words, destructively loyal. He would be powerful and relentless and deserving of protection. But the first thing he did was appear at their table on the first day of the Bloom wearing a finely pressed jacket and the thick flush of fur that sprang from his neck. Dapper, Rue recalled. That was what they thought when they saw him. They had thought that he was dapper, charming, even, and it was fascinating, the way that he moved. They watched the broad spread of his arms as he pulled chairs out for his new acquaintances, observing the keen shine of his dark, careful claws in the midday sun, and they remembered, for the first time in eons, the feeling of claws of their own flexing beneath the tight cinch of the glamor.
And so maybe it was that, the bare fact of what he was, his refusal to put on airs in a society that could scarcely breathe without them, that had done it. Maybe it was the way he just was, even as everything around him howled its protest. It wasn't that he made it look easy. It was that he made it to begin with.
True privacy at the Bloom was a resource too scarce to be depended upon. Rue, for their part, comported themself always as though in its lack; being alone, they knew intimately, was not the same as being safe. But they knew, immediately upon meeting Captain Hob, that they had to find a chance with him. They wanted, needed to speak with him, to be heard by him, in a way that superseded all design, all reservation, all restraint. A flash of impulse had settled into the space beside their heart and was emboldening it with every beat. Something like me, it keened. A moment alone with something like me.
Wanting this was not part of the plan. Pursuing it, much less so. But being near him made them feel bold, or maybe just foolish, and so for a brief moment, things had felt easy. As the echoes of the bugle rang out and forth in the forest, Rue had followed him in - no, they remembered with a jolt, they had invited him into the woods. In a burst of daring, they had asked, and he had said yes, and away they slunk into the shadows of the woods, far away from sight.
And there in the deep hug of the dark forest, they had considered… they had thought of… of what? What was the plan? Throwing everything away? Calling him to attention and dropping their glamors right there in the dirt? It was rash, but they couldn’t help it. Hob's very existence reminded Rue that they had claws. They wanted him to see the sharp curve of them, to stand to their full height and look him in the eye. They wanted - it was true, and it was terrifying - to be known with the immediacy that they felt Captain Hob was uniquely equipped to give them.
This desire was not planned. Neither was Hob’s hand on their wrist. Nor was the softness of his voice as he apologized, nor the way his eyes glimmered when they told him he was good, nor the wild thing that had briefly passed over him when sternly ordered.
For days after that, they hardly spoke. Rue couldn’t bear it. But Hob, Rue was coming to realize, was a man not fond of words, and he did not need them to continue to change them. His mere presence, the sight of him from across a room, made Rue remember that they had wings. He entered an event, and Rue’s eyes lost focus from the proceedings. He spoke, and Rue’s ears burned and silenced all else. He moved, and Rue tracked him without even thinking. Oh, and then he was kind. Oh, and then he was earnest. Oh, and then Rue wanted to make a mess of things, to throw out their ledger, to jump from a ledge and be carried by a wind that remembered them, to grip Hob by the arms and say they understood him, to do something drastic, to tear something to shreds, to, to-
To, oh, to be outlandish and not to care, to make it work anyway. Unable to stir to life the courage to tell him so, Rue admired Hob from across the Bloom with the pleading eyes of a creature caged for far too long, paced after him with feet that had grown to love the cold press of steel bars. Hob stood, gaze askance, seeing nothing, not knowing what door he had opened within Rue’s chest. Not knowing that it could never be closed again. In the end, it was this: some way, somehow, Rue was going to break something. They might as well break free.